Revolver
Director: Oh Seung-uk
Year: 2024
Rating: 6.5
Country:
Korea
Director Oh Seung-uk
(scriptwriter for Christmas in August) sets up the audience with expectations
and then refuses to meet them. Other films have programmed us that a film
like this should be explosive with action and satisfying revenge. We keep
waiting for it and waiting. I am not sure whether I respect him for this
or am a bit disappointed. He also leaves much unanswered and that is a bit
frustrating. A viewer needs to be on his toes with this one - it has a number
of characters all playing the angles - no one who can be trusted (till in
an almost Red (the French film) moment in the end when the old lady only
takes one bill) but at the same time none of them end up as I expected. It
runs nearly two hours and is very methodical and meticulous. It was nominated
in Korea for a number of awards - Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting
Actress. I don't know about Best Film but the other two are well-deserved.
Ha Soo-young is a sergeant in the Korean
police department. A dirty one. As is everyone in the film. She and other
cops have been taking bribes from a club owner to look the other way. When
it becomes known, the group elect Ha to take the fall. Spend two years in
prison and when you get out, you will have an apartment and a large payout
waiting for you. Ha is played by Jeon Do-yeon and I am not sure I would have
recognized her without looking at the credits. She is probably considered
the best actress in Korea over the past twenty years with roles as diverse
as in I Wish I Had a Wife, Untold Scandal, My Mother the Mermaid, You Are
My Sunshine, Secret Sunshine and The Housemaid. Really remarkable. Here she
plays her role with no make-up, no glamor, no softness, no flirtation, no
smiles - just a grim fuck you attitude.
One of the men in that group was her lover
played by Lee Jung-jae who dies by suicide while she is in jail. When she
gets out, there is no apartment, no payment, nothing. She wants what was
promised. You think this is headed towards a version of Point Blank - sort
of but not really. Everyone is keeping an eye on her - her lover's police
partner, a woman (Lim Ji-yeon) who knows all the players, plays all the sides
and wants her cut, the coked-up man who promised her the payout (Ji Chang-wook)
who now tells her he doesn't have the money and she will have to go to a
corporation for the money. The corporation says fine, but not now.
There is a lot more that floats through
the plot that is never fully made clear - and I wondered whether cuts to
the film had to be made or the director was fine just letting them go. There
are a couple beat-downs but not the action that one might be expecting. Knowing
that probably sets expectations in a way to better view the film. Watching
her steely stubborn determination to get her money is a pleasure and the
other actors are terrific as well. Just think drama and not an action film.
The film is tense throughout because you keep expecting sudden death or violence
until literally the very last second till the end credits begin and even
then you keep waiting and it is sort of a gift that it never comes.
